Turgwe Hippo Trust

Changes in the Turgwe Hippos' Lives

Since the death of Bob, the dominant bull, quite a few changes have occurred in the lives of his family. I expected the hippos to be somewhat unsettled, as Bob was close to fifty years of age and some of the older females in the group had spent their entire lives with him. Immediately after his death, his two errant females Abe and Wish, along with their calves Tacha and Pavodok, returned to the hippo pool near to our home, followed by Tembia- one of Bob's sons.
Tembia was conceived in the 1992 drought when his mother Lace lived with Bob. He was born in June 1993, the first hippo calf born after that horrendous drought. I believe his father was Bob, as he resembles him in many ways. For his first five years, he lived with his mother and Bob in this area around our home. Eventually Bob tried to chase him away from the group, but Lace was an exceedingly protective mother so she took the brunt of Bob's aggression. When both Lace and Tembia had suffered a few vicious attacks where both were quite badly cut up, they left the area.
For a while they moved about in the Turgwe, searching for a pool to move to, finally finding the only permanent natural pool in that entire stretch of river, some 16 kilometers downstream. For the next year they lived together in this new place. In 1999, Robin-also a son of Bob’s- joined them. I fed Robin during the drought of 1992, but by then he was already a mature hippo bull. His mother is Blackface and he has her genes- being blacker in coloration than the other hippos- but he looks very much like Bob. I guess that he is about twenty-four years of age, as he was at least 12 when he fed with the others.
At first Tembia was harassed by Robin but eventually the three settled down and lived in the pool together. Then in 2000 things changed. The river flooded tremendously after a cyclone hit our area and all the hippos in the entire river moved around. Lace gave birth to Enfin, Robin's calf, and Tembia moved away from them.
For the next two and a half years, Tembia lived around our area but could never join Bob and the main family. He finally settled into one of the cemented pans that we built for these hippos. We have built the pans as emergency backup pools for the hippos in case of the worst scenario- another severe drought. Sadly, due to this area having been "invaded" by these so-called war veterans and their minions, Tembia was often bothered by these awful people.
We built the pan next to a dirt road that leads to the western boundary of this wildlife conservancy. The people now use that track to go back to their real homes in the neighboring communal land. A lot of them are poaching and killing the wild animals and to harass Tembia is all part and parcel of their personalities. Once we caught a young African man with his catapult, actually trying to hit Tembia in the head with sharp stones. Tembia obviously tried to avoid such an unpleasant attack, where he could quite easily have lost one of his eyes.
We came along when Tembia was just getting angry.
The man was lucky, as an angry hippo bull can quite easily kill a human. The pan is not very large and the man was standing far too close to the one lower wall. We promptly took his catapult, breaking it in front of him. Then, in not too pleasant words, told him exactly what we thought of him, also telling him that by behaving in such a way he was asking for trouble.
Many years ago, a hippo bull killed an African woman in the neighboring communal land. That hippo had lived for many years in a large dam in that area. Children and young men, like the one attacking Tembia, had -over the years- upset the hippo, throwing stones at it and probably using their catapults. Eventually the hippo had had enough and it was just unfortunate that the person he killed was actually not in anyway hurting him. Her death was the consequence of other people's stupidity.
Of course, the hippo was then shot by National Parks as a so-called "problem animal". Neither the woman nor the hippo should have died. If the people had just shown respect for one of the animals that are part of their natural heritage and left him to go about his life in peace, the woman and the hippo would be alive today. So, you can imagine how I felt when I saw this young idiot attacking Tembia with those stones.
Tembia moved in and out of the pan but was too young to try and live in the weir pool and take over the family from Bob. Tembia would meet some of the females at night but during the day he spent his time between the pan and the river reeds near to the hippos' pool. When Bob was killed, Tembia came back with Wish and Abe but the other females did not seem as interested in him. Then, a few days later, Robin arrived, chasing Tembia away. For the next couple of weeks, Robin got to know most of the females, though his own mother, Blackface, kept her distance. She remained alone for most of the daylight hours. She, of all the females, seems to have changed the most in her behavior.
Blackface has lived with Bob for many, many years, taking a few months away every now and then. She would go off to be mated by the other bull, Happy,
but then return to Bob. The two of them were always together. She is also an older hippo, so had probably lived with Bob for most of her life. Since his death she spends the day alone. Inonde, her youngest calf, has finally been weaned and does not go anywhere near her mother now.
Blackface hides a lot under reeds or watches the others but she does not join in with the other hippos' activities nor does she have any contact with her son Robin. As humans, we are told constantly not to put our emotions and thoughts into an animal's behavior, but, as I watch the hippos, Blackface really does appear to miss Bob, as she has changed in so many ways.
I have always enjoyed her cantankerous behavior. Out of all of the Turgwe Hippos she is the most dangerous. Her charges are not playful and on many occasions she has left the water and put me up a tree! She is not to be taken lightly. Yet as I type, the ferocious and unpredictable lady hippo is much quieter, far more reserved than she has ever been. I hope that soon she will return to being the cheeky hippo she can be.
In early March, we had late rainfall and a lot of rain, due to another cyclone. Once more the river flooded and all hippos dispersed. I eventually found most of them in a smaller river adjacent to the Turgwe, Robin having remained with them. Now they have moved to a place we call the Owl Tree area, which is about half a kilometer upstream from their normal weir pool.
Robin is in charge of them but they are still not settled. With the flooding of the river, many natural pools are once more clear of the sand, which had blocked the river for the last two years. It looks as if even the weir pool will not need Jean-Roger's intervention with the sand pump this year. Fortunately, the floods appear to have
washed most, if not all, of the accumulated sand out of these pools. This is great news as there is presently no fuel within Zimbabwe. The use of the sand pump, running on diesel, would not have been an easy option.
The hippos have moved about a lot since March, using three main areas within the Turgwe, all within five kilometers of our home, Hippo Haven. One area is where these people have stolen a house and moved into it. Their so-called leader, Robert Mamungaere, stole the house, moved his wife and children there, bringing over 93 of his cattle from his real home to this area. He then hired people to cut down the trees adjacent to the river and clear land to plant maize and cotton. These people were lucky this year as the late rains gave them some maize, pumpkins, and some cotton. The land is not productive for this unsustainable form of crop growing and next year, if we have a normal season, their crops will not grow as our rainfall is far too low for non-irrigated crops. In the meantime they destroy everything. They all poach and kill the animals but blame the poaching on other people.
Robert has told Jean-Roger over the last two years that the poachers are the white men who owned the land, as well as the black game scouts who work for the white men. Then, he changed his tune and said that the poachers were coming from the next door land which is also occupied by another bunch of war veterans and their minions. Then, he said the poachers were some of the people he had employed but he had fired them. His latest excuse is that it is the rural people coming from a three-hour walk from here. He lies with a straight face.
When the hippos moved back to the one area, which is called the measuring weir, we followed them. We had been concentrating on patrolling for snares closer to our home and upstream of the hippos' normal pool. On the first day that we returned to the measuring weir to check the hippos, we found over forty snares set in the acacia woodlands adjacent to the Turgwe. Amongst the snares were six freshly killed impalas, and we found another seven carcasses in that small area. All had been skinned and parts of the animals removed.
The safari operator on the other side of the Turgwe managed to arrest, along with his game scouts, three men who live on this land. They had, between them,
eight dead animals. Of course they were released from the police station, classified as "involved in the political situation" and are now back in their hut near to us.
In a three-week period, between the game scouts and us, we have removed from that area-which is only about one kilometer in length by approximately half a kilometer in width-over 93 snares. We have found 15 snared animals, and counted over 23 butchered carcasses. That place used to have plus/minus 500 resident impala, 150 waterbuck that moved about a bit, plus kudu, wildebeest, and about 40 warthogs. We have counted 42 live waterbuck with babies, 3 warthogs and about forty impala since going back into that specific area. These people have killed the rest.
With the hippos moving back to the measuring weir, we have a legitimate reason to be going there and, of course, we remove the snares. Now the scouts patrol there more than they used to do. The areas the scouts have to work in are huge and poaching is occurring in so many places now. This wildlife conservancy had many kilometers of its boundary wire fence stolen, so anybody can just walk in and poach these days. As the law is so lenient on poachers due to the politics of Zimbabwe at present, these people eventually will win and there will not be an animal left in our entire area...unless something is done soon.
We obviously have no intention of stopping patrolling. We remove the snares, and we cut them up with pinches so that they cannot be reused. We patrol day in, day out but we are only two people. There are 14 game scouts on the one safari operators’ land opposite us, and across the Turgwe River. There are about 20 so-called "new settlers" in our area now, but in each family there are many hangers on, so there are about 100 people moving in and around the bush here. By sheer numbers alone they can eventually destroy everything. We have managed to keep the regular hippo paths and their main grazing areas clear of snares, but it is literally a daily battle. We have been physically threatened and we often come back from a patrol totally exhausted due to the amount of adrenaline we use up. We reach home and relax a bit and then the tiredness sets in.
When you patrol, you do not speak, you use sign language, you walk about fifty feet away from each other, you search every tree and bush. Your eyes are strained. Your ears concentrate on every natural sound, listening for something not natural. Your heart beats a bit louder and faster than normal. When you do suddenly hear or see something odd then its total alertness, dry mouth with heart palpitating, and, yes, even sometimes fear.
I am, after all, a female and supposedly of the weaker sex! Hence I can be afraid and admit it. Poor Jean-Roger has to be the tough one, which, as a gentle Frenchman, is not always his idea of fun.Yet we rely on each other, but it is no longer interesting; patrolling daily we wonder for how long our minds and bodies will continue to take the strain. The hippos, at this moment, have returned to the Owl Tree but because of the deaths we have witnessed at the measuring weir area we will continue to include that area into our patrol. I do not know if the hippos will remain at Owl Tree, return to their normal weir pool or go back to the poached areas. Two young females, Libra and Kubi, have left their mothers, Wish, Surprise, and the rest of their family and joined Tembia- the younger of the two bulls.
As Tembia is a bit undernourished, due to the harassment he has had from humans, it is good that he now has two hippo females to look after. Perhaps with the pools having opened up he can make a home for himself and the two females. He needs to put on some weight as he is a bit skinny, and then settle down to a happier hippo life. Having two females will definitely stop him from wandering and I just hope that the pool they are living in at present will remain open for the entire period of our dry season, from now until late November.
I do not know where Happy- the other mature hippo bull- has gone. A lot of hippos have moved away from this area since my study began. Happy, up until quite recently, was only about seven kilometers away, but he has not come down to this area since Bob died. Perhaps he does not want a large family again or maybe he has settled in the tiny channel he was living in, as I have found the tracks of one young female with him. I think it will be Robin who ends up replacing Bob, but it is still early to be one hundred percent sure. Other animals in our lives have had some changes as well.
For anybody who has bought our video "For the Love of Hippos", they would have watched Arthur, the one wild male warthog, when he came along to our home. He has not been here now for over a year. His entire family had left here and I’ve been a little afraid that these people killed them. Just two days ago, Naf Naf came home. He is Arthur's three-year-old son and has not been at our house for over six months. So there is hope. I believe that the family moved away. Animals are not stupid and if they realize there is danger, they will do their best to avoid it. Hopefully one day my lovely Arthur will return. In the meantime, Naf Naf is keeping us company.
Boon, the leader of the vervet monkeys, has left the group. He now lives with one younger male vervet at least six kilometers away from us and Boon's large family of male, female, and baby vervet monkeys. The twins born in 2002 survived and now do not need to be constantly in the company of their mother. Jean and I saw the two bush pigs, Clyde, a very large male, and his old female, Bonny, only last night. They too have not come near our home for the last four months. They had a new baby with them, so obviously that has kept them busy and with the late rains there has been plenty of food for them in the bush. The two little large-spotted genets that have lived with us for years and get my left over pussycat's food are still with us. So around our home the animals are, thank God, fine. Just a few days ago, I watched a large elephant bull in one of the so-called farmlands of these people with great amusement. He was picking up their pumpkins and squashing each and every pumpkin on his tusks, eating a little bit, and then chucking the destroyed pumpkin away from him. Now you may think, on reading this, that I am being terribly harsh, as a pumpkin is food for these people. A quick explanation is required I believe.
There are plus/minus 800 elephants in this Conservancy. Years and years ago this area had elephants. White man then moved into the natural bush and tried to farm cattle here in large ranches. Elephants and cattle do not mix well fence wise, etc., so said elephants were destroyed. There were no farms then, no local African people; this was all untamed wild African bush.Then, many years later, white men turned from cattle to wildlife, having learnt from their mistakes. They started, in most cases, in the hunting world, but some others moved to photographic and eco safaris. Again, more changes occurred and this wildlife conservancy was born, with both kinds of safaris and with a plan to make the area sustainable to wildlife and people, to conserve the area naturally.
For the owners, obviously, it was to make a good living financially but the whole objective was to keep it for wildlife. It was proven to be the best land use for this area. The people, the Africans, were to benefit from this whole setup, be it in employment, in participation, etc. Many projects were put forward.
Elephants were reintroduced along with other animals like buffalo. Within ten years, the animal numbers had increased and this conservancy was becoming a highly profitable business for those involved. Most importantly, in line with my way of thinking, the wild animals had the chance of a life-which was far superior to any they had had in the decades before.
Then politics reared its ugly head. I have written in previous mails what has been happening here. Suffice to say that the land has been proven to be unsuitable for farming, for cattle, and that the only way people can make a living from this land is by letting the natural inhabitants live here. Elephants need space. This conservancy covers one million acres, but at present nearly one half of it has been invaded. The elephant belongs here; he was here long before any human being walked on this land. The pumpkin does not belong here! Enough said.
We can only wait to see what the outcome of this total breakdown in the fabric of a society will bring. It is disheartening, but the elephant was only doing what he should do: eat. In fact, the breaking of the pumpkins and chucking them away actually looked as if he was making a point!
Will our illustrious government now send in their army to kill 900 elephants? Will they kill everything? We do not know.
With regards to hippos, they too have their differences. Storm, who is another son of Bob, although a youngster of six years, was beaten up by either Tembia or Robin. His scars look far worse than they are. I have seen, over the years, the most horrendous wounds on wild animals. Boon, the vervet, once came here with his one arm nearly hanging off. After a period of only four weeks, where I often watched him lick the arm, it had completely healed, without a mark in sight! Another hippo, Mystery, was slashed by another female across her face. The canine tooth left an open wound about a foot in length. The wound was to the bone, actually puncturing it in one place. She now just has a little scar.
Storm's two cuts (one on the side of his neck and a hole with skin removed from the one back leg) will heal. The great thing is that he has been allowed, at this moment, to stay with the group. Being six years old, Robin could chase him away but so far he is with his mother Cheeky and his younger sister Hope, and all is well.
With all the problems in Zimbabwe these days; with friends of mine who no longer have homes (they were farmers and have been chased off their land and, in some cases ,even had their pet animals killed by these people); with old people who have retired and who are living off pensions not being able to afford to feed themselves; with the general population being subjected to lack of food, to rises in costs that have to be seen to be believed; with the disappearance of basic food off the supermarket shelves and with all the terrible atrocities happening to animals and people in this land; we still have Hope.

Karen Paolillo, Hippo Haven, Save Valley Conservancy, 25th May 2003.

Photos
The photos below are the most recent views of the Turgwe hippos.
If you'd like to see photos of the snared animals Karen regretfully discovered,
then you may click the following link, but be warned that these images might
be upsetting or disturbing. Do NOT view if you are troubled by images of violence
towards animals. The Future of Wildlife in Zimbabwe?